Jammeh leaves Gambia for exile without justice

Gambia’s long-serving dictator, Yahya Jammeh, faced calls to be prosecuted for human rights abuses yesterday as he finally announced he was stepping down after 22 years of tyrannical rule.

In a brief but grandiose speech at his presidential office in the small hours of Saturday morning, the former army officer told Gambians he would "relinquish the mantle of leadership" in the name of democracy.

In reality, he had been left with no choice after being warned that if he clung to power a day longer, a regional invasion force massed at the border would take him out by force.

But as regional mediators nailed down the final details of an agreement that will see him exiled elsewhere in Africa, the question remained of whether he would ever be held accountable for the thousands of Gambians he is accused of jailing, torturing and killing over the years.

Diplomats said yesterday that Mr Jammeh was likely to be offered sanctuary in either Equatorial Guinea, Mauritania or Morocco. The Gambian autocrat had wanted to be allowed to retire to his large farmstead south of the capital, Banjul, but was told his continued presence on home soil would be a threat to good order.

However, while his departure will help Gambia have a smooth transition of power, it also means his victims and their families may never have their day in court. Morocco, for example, has not ratified the statutes of the International Criminal Court, and neither Mauritania nor Equatorial Guinea are known as beacons of human rights.

During Mr Jammeh’s regime, hundreds of Gambians languished in Banjul’s notorious Mile Two Prison and the national intelligence compound, both of which lie just a few kilometres from the palm beaches that attract thousands of foreign tourists every year. A fervent believer in sorcery, he also styled himself as his country’s witchfinder general, once force-feeding hallucinogenic potions to 1,000 villagers he suspected of putting curses on him.

Mr Jammeh was also openly contemptuous of human rights norms, telling both the then UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, and Amnesty International to "go to hell" last year when they demanded an inquiry into the case of an opposition leader beaten to death in custody.

Gambian activists also want to know more about the sources of Mr Jammeh’s huge personal fortune. Diplomats estimate it could be anything up to US$3 billion (Dh11bn), sourced variously by embezzlement, cronyism and allowing Gambia to be used as a stage post in the trans-Atlantic cocaine trade from Latin America to Europe. There are rumours that he and his family have been trying to ship out cash and other valuables in containers in recent weeks.

"Jammeh came as a pauper bearing guns. He should leave as a disrobed despot," said Jeggan Bahoum of the Movement for the Restoration of Democracy in Gambia.

Despite the desire for justice to be done, one diplomat told The National it could take "a decade" to compile a watertight prosecution case against Mr Jammeh, by which time many Gambians might prefer to forget, if not forgive.

The news that the Jammeh era was finally over was greeted cautiously by Gambians in Banjul on Saturday, with no immediate sign of the wild street parties that took place when he was declared the loser of last month’s elections.

Most Gambians said they would only celebrate once they knew he had definitely left the country, or when Adama Barrow, the newly sworn-in president, returned from exile in neighbouring Senegal. Mr Barrow was forced to leave Gambia last week amid fears that Mr Jammeh might try to have him killed.

"We will have a big party once we know the old man has definitely gone and the new guy is coming, but not before," said Alpha Jallow, a storekeeper in Banjul’s beachside Kotu district.

Right now, he added, few locals were in the mood for celebrations anyway, thanks to the exodus of thousands of tourists last week amid fears that Banjul might become a war zone.

"Jammeh has already done the damage that he needs to," Mr Jallow said. "We will have no tourists again this season."

 
-thenational